A blog for all seasons; A blog for one; A blog for all. As the 11th most informative blog on the planet, I have a seared memory of throwing my Time 2006 Man of the Year Award over the railing at Time Warner Center.
Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Protests Continue In Yemen

Demonstrations continue in Yemen for a third day as they protest against the Yemeni regime. The grievances should sound familiar, since it's a refrain from the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and is likely to spread to the other autocratic and kleptocratic regimes in the Middle East although there is an added element in Yemen of secessionists hoping for Southern Yemen to break off and form its own country.

The protests, organized largely via text message, were the largest yet by young Yemenis, with more than 1,000 marching. And it appeared to mark a rift with opposition groups who had organized previous demonstrations that wrested significant concessions from President Ali Abdullah Saleh, including the promise that he would relinquish power in 2013.

Those established opposition groups did not join the crowd on Sunday, which was calling for the immediate ouster of the president. After the initial demonstration, a smaller group of young protesters peeled off and marched toward the presidential palace, only to be violently repulsed by armed security forces both uniformed and in plain clothes, some armed with stun guns, witnesses said. There were reports of several injuries, but no deaths.

“The J.M.P. in our opinion — the opinion of the students — is that they move in stages,” said a 30-year-old protester, Mohamed Mohsin, referring to the Joint Meeting Parties, a coalition of opposition parties. “But we go to the demonstrations to send the message to the leadership now.”

Unlike the earlier protests in Yemen, which were highly organized and marked by color-coordinated clothing and signs, the spontaneity of the younger demonstrators appeared to have more in common with popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, where opposition groups watched from the sidelines as leaderless revolts grew into revolutions.

The opposition coalition said at a news conference in Sana, the capital, on Sunday that it welcomed the new street protests, but cautioned that the situation could quickly escalate if mass uprisings took hold in Yemen, a country with a well-armed populace. “If the people on the streets take the lead, we will say thank you for that,” said Yassin Saeed Noman, a socialist party leader, adding that the opposition “should deal wisely with this big movement.”

The opposition group said that 120 people had been arrested in protests on Saturday and Sunday in Taiz, a poverty-stricken town about a four-hour drive south of the capital, as waves of youthful unrest spread to new places.

Sheik Hamid al-Ahmar, an opposition leader, said in an interview on Sunday that political leaders had tried to prevent the younger demonstrators from taking to the streets to demand immediate changes to the autocratic rule of Mr. Saleh. But, he said, “It’s not that they aren’t cooperating with the new protests,” only that opposition leaders would like to move more slowly.

Mr. Saleh, an important ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism, has in recent weeks sought to counter a rising tide of opposition and preserve his three-decade rule by raising army salaries, halving income taxes and ordering price controls, among other concessions.

Since Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt on Friday, police officers, some of them armed, have filled Sana’s central square — which, like its Cairo counterpart, is called Tahrir Square — blocking access with concertina wire to prevent protesters from gathering. Witnesses reported seeing men in plain clothes with AK-47s on the street.

“This is a revolution across the whole Arab world,” said Jalal Bakry, an unemployed protester standing in front of the main entrance to Sana University. “If those in Tahrir Square want to kill me, that’s O.K. We will still be peaceful.”